


Little Pieces

by blackbubbletea



Category: Mighty Boosh (TV)
Genre: Drunkenness, M/M, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-24
Updated: 2012-08-24
Packaged: 2017-11-12 19:50:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/495045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackbubbletea/pseuds/blackbubbletea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Taking care of a drunk, sick shaman was difficult enough without all of these confusing feelings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Pieces

By the time they reached home, it was quite late. There was almost no one left on the streets to stare at the tiny, highly inebriated man falling all over himself, accompanied by a less drunk but still somewhat tipsy gorilla who was doing his best to guide the former back to their flat without either ending up with any great injuries from that mortal enemy of all drunks – the hard, unforgiving sidewalk. It hadn’t been a completely successful mission; Naboo was definitely going to have a few bruises on his knees. But given exactly how much he’d drank that evening, it was a miracle that he was getting away with just that.

One final obstacle stood between the pair and victory in the Battle of Homecoming, and that was that tonight, of all nights, someone had actually remembered to lock the shop door.

“Keys?” Bollo queried after trying the handle. 

“Thought you had ‘em,” murmured Naboo from his seat on the curb, having plunked down there in a temporary surrender to the forces of gravity that had been out to get him all night. 

The gorilla patted himself down, foggily trying to retrace back through the madness of the night to when they’d first left the flat, and which one of them might have put the keys in their – only at that point in his train of thought did it occur to him that he was a gorilla, and therefore did not have pockets. Process of elimination found him crouched down by the shaman (who really was not looking so great), gingerly pulling the keys out of a pocket that was never meant to accommodate so huge a hand. 

He was relatively lucky; the second key on the ring that he tried in the lock happened to be the correct one. But there was little time to celebrate gaining access to their home, as Naboo took this opportunity to vomit all over himself. Bollo groaned. It had really only been a matter of time – that much tequila would’ve done that to anyone. Still, couldn’t he have had the decency to wait the three minutes it would have taken to navigate him up the stairs and dump him in the bathroom? He gave a sigh and went to examine the damage. 

Naboo looked up at him with what was essentially the most pitiful expression ever; puke all down his front. Briefly, he pondered how much trouble he’d be in the following day if he just hauled him out behind the shop and hosed him off. But even if he hadn’t feared the wrath of a roughly-treated hungover shaman, he knew that sick puppy dog eyes plus shivering would have been a positively lethal combination. Either that or Naboo would try to fight with him, and then he’d just end up with vomit on himself as well. 

Rather than watch the farce that would be his master trying to navigate through a dark shop and up a flight of stairs, leaving a trail of sick in his wake, Bollo chose to open the door to the Nabootique, then return to the curb and scoop up the shop’s namesake. A brief noise of protest was made, but they both knew that the man hardly had the fortitude to do much more walking. Besides, this way, if he happened to puke again, they might be lucky enough that it’d all just get caught in his robe. One less thing to clean. Or perhaps to make Howard clean, after convincing him that sleep-vomiting was an actual condition and that horrible mess all over the stairs was in fact his fault. 

Carrying Naboo wasn’t particularly difficult – the real challenge lay in getting up those stairs. Bollo couldn’t hold onto the banister, and wasn’t nearly sober enough to be completely confident in his stair-climbing abilities (usually top-notch). So he took it very slowly, one step at a time, and tried not to envision Howard and Vince waking up to a horrible pile of concussed gorilla, vomit, and squished shaman. He also tried not to look at Naboo, as he was currently kind of disgusting, and the second-to-last thing they needed right now (the last thing being the aforementioned horrible pile) was for some sort of chain reaction puke-a-thon to start. 

He had made it to the third step from the top when Naboo began making a noise not unlike a cat that had a hairball, and he completely abandoned caution to make a mad dash for the bathroom. The pair did indeed make it there before the shaman commenced being sick once again – Naboo limp in his arms like some strange pastiche of a bride being brought over the threshold of her new home – but not, unfortunately, to the toilet. One eye twitching slightly, Bollo had to resist the command coming in from every brain cell to drop his friend to the tile as he felt liquid that had been in a shot glass when last he’d seen it begin to seep into his fur. So much for not getting vomit on himself.

“M’sorry…” Naboo moaned apologetically.

“Yeah,” Bollo grunted in reply, setting him on his feet. “Bollo draw bath.” The floor in here was going to be filthy, but he would just have to deal with that later. After clumsily fitting the plug into the drain and turning on the faucet, he turned back to face Naboo, who was remaining standing only by virtue of the fact that he was leaning heavily against the wall. He sighed at the blank look he received back and instructed, “Lift arms…” This, at least, was not a task too difficult for the intoxicated shaman, and he complied, allowing Bollo to slip his robe off over his head. The turban he had worn out that night was long gone, and that was something everyone was going to be sure to hear complaints about the following morning (or, more realistically, afternoon) – it was the second one he had lost in a month.

He knelt down to gently lift up first one skinny ankle then the other, pulling off the curled-toe trainers and Naboo’s socks, one green and its mismatched mate purple with orange stripes. The shaman simply watched as he fumbled with the button on his trousers. So many of these human things, they were far too tiny for his thick fingers. At least he didn’t have to trouble with the zipper, as he was able to slide the waistband down over bony hips once the button was loose, absentmindedly thinking to himself that he really ought to try to get Naboo to expand his diet a bit from crisps, booze, and whatever weird stuff they dug out of the back of the refrigerator when the munchies struck.

Nudity had never been a matter of particular concern between them, especially not to Bollo, who was essentially always naked – under his fur, of course. As different as their backgrounds might have been, one commonality they had was that neither had ever been instilled with that very human sense of shame for one’s own body. Which worked out quite well, because whether that had been there or not, when you shared a room with someone it was basically inevitable that you saw their ass from time to time. A bit more frequently if they had a habit of getting so drunk or stoned that their clothing became, to their mind, an unfathomable labyrinth of fabric.

Still, perhaps there was something off about this, he thought as he tugged down gold boxer shorts. He could imagine the looks on their two roommate’s faces were they to walk in on the pair – all scrunched up and uncomfortable in the way that let you know something was definitely wrong. But they couldn’t understand. They never knew Naboo in his moments like these, when he couldn’t even remember how to take care of himself. They never saw the lost look in his eyes when all of the shaman’s wisdom had failed him. 

“Ugh, it’s in m’hair,” the small man slurred as Bollo was divesting him of his shorts. Since it was a pretty self-evident statement, he chose not to respond, merely lifted him into the now-filled tub and twisted the faucet handle off once he was sure that Naboo at least temporarily understood the concept of sitting up. 

Peering down first at the pale form in the bath, then at the dark patches where sick had leaked onto his fur, Bollo thought for a moment and then climbed in to sit behind Naboo. It would go faster this way, and besides, if he wasn’t supervising then there was no guarantee that he wouldn’t end up with a drowned Xooberonian on his hands. 

He had barely settled himself in when Naboo leaned back and limply rested his head against Bollo’s collarbone. 

“Turban’s lost again, innit?”

Bollo made a soft noise of assent, carefully combing his fingers through the damp ends of the shaman’s hair. It was lank and tangled now, but maintained its glossy sheen even with puke as a substitute for product. Many lady gorillas, he thought, would have killed for such a lovely shade of black. 

He knew it was kind of strange when he thought things like that, but he also knew that Naboo cuddling up against him while he was naked was probably even stranger. 

“M’sorry.” The repetition of the apology was halfway muffled against his fur.

“It okay,” Bollo replied. “Just don’t get sick in tub.”

“I won’t. Feel better, now.”

“Good. Turn head.” 

Apparently that action required that Naboo, with much difficulty, squirm his way into Bollo’s lap before turning his head to the side so the gorilla, who made a small noise that was equal parts disgruntled and disconcerted, could get at the rest of his hair. 

That they were so close wasn’t exactly the thing that bothered him. It was more how comfortable he felt; how well Naboo seemed to fit against him. Maybe if they were always like this, it wouldn’t be so hard to protect the shaman, but Naboo seemed to harbor a general distaste for closeness while he was sober. It made it all the more strange when he’d get affectionate like this.

Or maybe he was just confusing affection with loss of bodily control. The two did tend to be similar. And that was another thing that bothered Bollo, the way Naboo wouldn’t quit shifting against him. He couldn’t really feel the softness of the skin that was sliding against his coarse fur, but he could when his fingers ghosted over one pale shoulder to scoop water onto it. And he could feel a pulse gently beating just below that skin as he ran one wet hand against Naboo’s neck to remove a sticky trail of mostly-tequila, the small man complacently tilting his head up to allow him easier access. 

It made his stomach twist in a way that felt wrong but also a bit exciting to think that touching any part of the shaman would probably only be met with the same groggy compliance. Gingerly, he ran an exploratory hand down past Naboo’s collarbone on the pretense of making sure his chest was clean, and his fingers caught briefly on a hard nipple. It spurred on his uncomfortable curiosity, and he continued down, following the trail of sparse dark hair. So exposed, humans were. Completely vulnerable to the elements with no real coat to speak of. But then, Naboo wasn’t human. Bollo often forgot this, but if he had been, then the hair ought to have grown thicker, the further he went. Instead it was nothing but soft skin, softer even than his shoulders or neck. 

Naboo also forgot that Bollo wasn’t human, on occasion. He had told him so. It was because of his eyes, he’d said. Blue – not like other gorillas. Which was funny, because the black coffee color of Naboo’s eyes had always reminded him more of an animal than any man he’d ever known. They were closed now, covered by long dark lashes that fluttered slightly in tandem with a barely detectable twitch of the shaman’s muscles. It only then occurred to him that he had his hand between Naboo’s legs, but it was not until the silence was broken by a soft puff of air exhaled against his chest that something raw and dark swirled up within him, something that made him not want to stop but that he only understood well enough to know that he had to, and that he had better get out of that bathtub right away.

Bollo carefully slid out from underneath Naboo then stood up and stepped out of the tub, unable to make himself care that he was dripping on the floor. After grabbing a towel and halfway drying off, he reached down to yank the chain attached to the drain stopper. As the water began to softly burble down towards the sewer, he took both of Naboo’s hands and helped – or perhaps, more accurately, pulled – him up, made sure he stayed in an upright position as he stepped over the slippery porcelain, and wordlessly handed him a towel. He resumed drying himself, feeling very awkward. It was not an emotion he felt often, but something learned after spending so much time with humans – something _necessary_ after spending so much time with humans.

Naboo had simply wrapped the towel around himself, droplets of water still clinging in his hair. Well, if he wanted to go to bed damp then that was his business. After all, Bollo couldn’t do everything for him, could he? He shouldn’t. He wasn’t a person. He didn’t play any of the roles that people created for each other. Familiars were for magic, and they belonged to shamans, not the other way around. 

Of course there was a part of him that was wondering if Naboo might get sick if he slept with his hair wet, but that part was always there. It was the same part that tried to figure out how to get more fruit into his diet, that made him tea, and that put up with weird rules and even weirder jobs, bossiness, crankiness, and general ungratefulness for everything he did. He didn’t know if it was the same part that wanted to be close to him and understand all the little pieces of him, especially the ones he kept guarded until he’d gotten quite drunk or high, but if it was then maybe he ought to start telling it to be quiet.

There were things they had down in the shop – statuettes, vases, dead butterflies pinned in boxes – that were nice to look at but were not things you were supposed to touch a lot. You might like to pick them up and feel that they were yours, but one wrong move and you might find all the little pieces you were trying to examine as just that – little pieces, broken and scattered all over the floor. He thought that this might be something similar. The sense of something being wrong and off-limits was there, at least, but it seemed to him that the feeling of want was so much stronger, and so much more difficult to understand than a simple fascination with a shiny trinket.

He had nothing to say and was not even sure that he ought to say anything. Opening the door, Bollo nodded in the direction of the room they shared, then flipped the light off and padded out, a second pair of smaller feet shuffling after him and undoubtedly leaving a wet trail behind them. 

When they reached the bedroom, Naboo wasted no time in flopping down on the bed, the towel still drawn about his shoulders like a cape on the least effective superhero ever. “Thanks, Bollo,” he murmured as the ape’s thick hand pulled the duvet onto him. “You’re the best.”

Oh, if only he had a tape recorder or some other way to quote that tomorrow when it’d be nothing but surly expressions and whined demands of, “Where’s my turban? Why’d you let me drink so much? Why’s the bathroom such a mess?” But you take what you can get.

He knew Naboo wouldn’t have minded if he shared the bed tonight. He was allowed to as long as he was clean and didn’t hog the blankets (as if he ever even had that option with the way the shaman would cocoon himself into them). Still, he opted for the futon for reasons he couldn’t quite explain to himself. 

There were many things he could not explain. Among animals, it was a given that there were sometimes things that defied explanation. There were times when they would laugh at humans, so obsessed with having all things around them make perfect sense. But lying there in the dark, listening to the calm rhythm of his master’s breathing and still feeling soft skin against his fingertips and a twisting in his belly, he believed that he was beginning to understand that compulsion. Sometimes, the things that didn’t make sense were the most important ones.


End file.
